The industry's most comprehensive health and wellbeing coaching course
Master the client-centred coaching skills and techniques with our industry-leading health and wellbeing coaching course.
The health and fitness industry's first health and wellbeing coaching course
Become a master of transformative coaching techniques with our pioneering health and wellbeing coaching course.
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Course type:
Online
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Time to complete:
4-6 months
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Entry-requirements:
None
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Accreditations:
CIMSPA, YMCA Awards (endorsed)
Course overview: Solution-focused coaching
This health and wellbeing coaching course is the first active-leisure industry programme to combine core health coaching competencies with other lifestyle and wellbeing strategies to create a comprehensive learning pathway for anyone wanting to become a leading health and wellbeing practitioner.
The financial and economic cost to society for treating and managing chronic illness and other long-term health conditions is at breaking point. Today, the NHS and other health care systems around the world spend an eye watering amount time, money, and other resources managing patients with a myriad of long-term, chronic health conditions. The majority of these conditions are preventable with appropriate lifestyle modifications.
Health and wellbeing coaching as a profession is a relatively new intervention in which the practitioner uses evidence-based communication techniques to skilfully engage clients to actively explore their own ideas and opportunities around change. This profession is fast-gaining traction, both in formal healthcare settings, but also in the private and corporate sector also.
If you are serious and passionate about supporting people to make transformative changes to their health status, then this health and wellbeing coaching course is definitely for you. The course content is presented via comprehensive training manual, available in print and digital format, but also via a range of online learning and video activities. This is a highly interactive and engaging learning programme.
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Entry requirements
There are no formal entry-requirements for this course in terms of qualifications or experience because this isn’t a regulated fitness-industry qualification.
Students will need to have a positive and open-minded outlook to engage with the programme. The techniques and approaches taught in this health and wellbeing coaching course will require practitioners to be open to changing the way they work and communicate with others. This programme involves much more than simply collecting information. -
Who is this course for?
This course is designed specifically for people who want to work as a health and wellbeing coach, whether this is in a healthcare, corporate, or private-sector environment. This course will be particularly useful for fitness instructors and personal trainers wanting to transition into more of a professional coaching role.
Health and wellbeing coaching is about working in partnership with people to help them overcome key barriers and challenges in their life which are preventing them from becoming healthier and happier. If you feel like this is a career that you would like to pursue, either in the NHS, or further afield, then this course is for you. -
Accreditations
Our health and wellbeing practitioner course is fully endorsed by YMCA Awards and the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA). On completion of this course, students will receive 10 CIMSPA CPD points.
This course is also accredited by the Personalised Care Institute, or PCI. The PCI are responsible for setting the standards for personalised care across the NHS and other healthcare institutions, including quality assuring and accrediting professional training courses like this. -
Progression routes
The health and wellbeing coaching landscape is rapidly expanding as more organisations embrace the client-centred approach. Consequently, there are a wide-range of opportunities for qualified health and wellbeing coaches to progress, both in terms of the qualifications they complete, but also in their professional roles.
Initially, newly qualified health and wellbeing coaches will want to engage in a process of reflective practice to really strengthen the quality of their existing coaching skills. It’s also a best practice to deliver some sessions in a supervised capacity where a more experienced coach can observe and provide feedback on areas for improvement.
This programme is endorsed by the PCI at level 2, but there are higher-level programmes available on the PCI website for practitioners to take which involve much more observed and supervised practice.
What you'll learn
This comprehensive health and wellbeing coaching course explores all the knowledge, understanding and practical coaching skills that are required to become an effective health and wellbeing coach.
You’ll discover the core principles of client-centred coaching, essential communication techniques, information about effective lifestyle strategies to improve health and wellbeing, and much more. The course also incorporates tried and tested coaching techniques like motivational interviewing, solution-focused coaching, and other client-centred approaches, to deliver the most up to date evidence-based communication and behaviour change techniques.
The course is divided into the following 13 units and each of these units are delivered via a series of self-paced online learning activities, textbook sections and video lectures, to give you the necessary knowledge, understanding and competencies.
- Introduction to health and wellbeing coaching
- Understanding health, wellbeing and wellness
- Health inequality and the wider determinants of health
- Lifestyle factors that influence health and wellbeing
- Exploring mental health and wellbeing
- Supporting clients with long-term conditions
- Client-centred coaching skills
- Fundamental human needs in the context of change
- Motivational interviewing
- Solution-focused coaching
- Professional practice in health and wellbeing coaching
- Planning health and wellbeing coaching sessions
- Delivering health and wellbeing coaching sessions
How you'll be assessed
At the end of each unit, you’ll be required to complete an online knowledge and understanding workbook, which evaluates your understanding of the information, and application of the concepts taught in that unit. While you are required to answer all questions correctly, you’ll be able to re-take these as many times as you need to.
Throughout the course you will be required to complete a reflective coaching journal which will document your own reflections and evaluations from a range of directed study tasks and activities. These activities span the entirety of the course content and you will need to ensure that you dedicate sufficient time to this process throughout your studies. You will submit this journal for marking at the end of the course.
Finally, you will be required to complete a practical coaching session where you will demonstrate your ability to apply the coaching techniques you have learned in a real-life coaching scenario. You will record your coaching session and upload this to our platform for marking at the end of your course.
25%
Workbooks
- Multi-choice
- Quiz style
- Unlimited attempts
25%
Journal
- Personal reflection
- Focus on application
- Directed tasks
50%
Coaching skills
- With a real client
- Various techniques
- Record for grading
Why complete this health and wellbeing coaching course?
Become a skilled behaviour change practitioner and discover the proven strategies to help clients and patients become active participants in their own health and wellbeing.
We know that traditional approaches to improving people’s health and wellbeing have failed to reverse the increasing number of people developing chronic lifestyle-related, diseases, and long-term health conditions (e.g., obesity, diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, some cancers).
We also know that simply giving people more information, tailored advice, or educating them on the relative benefits of changing their lifestyle against the risks of not changing, also doesn’t work.
While there are many reasons for this, broadly speaking, traditional ‘advice-based’ approaches have failed to resolve the underlying mental, emotional and psychological factors associated with behaviour change and adherence to change.
Health and wellbeing coaching is a behaviour change intervention which focuses on delivering highly skilled coaching conversations which meet individuals where they are at, without trying to persuade or influence them to change. The process recognises the client’s complete right to autonomy and freedom to choose for themselves, without judgement or pressure. Fundamentally, health and wellbeing coaching is about creating a collaborative partnership between the coach and the client, acknowledging that the client is the expert in their own life.
On completion of this health and wellbeing coaching course, you’ll be able to:
- Understand why the information and advice model doesn’t work
- Integrate the principles of client-centred coaching in to your practice
- Communicate more effectively with clients for change
- Better empathise with clients and their personal challenges
- Evoke from clients their motives and resistance to change
- Use a range of coaching techniques and strategies to promote lasting change
- More effectively help clients to overcome their ambivalence
All too often, coaches position themselves as the expert in the coaching conversation instead of being a partner and advocate for the clients. Unfortunately, is where the wheels of change start to fall off!
One health coaching course. Unlimited opportunities.
Where will your health and wellbeing coaching course take you? Join the thousands of HFE graduates that are now working with some of the worlds leading health, fitness and wellbeing brands. Many of our former students are now also running their own health and wellbeing businesses.
Frequently asked health coaching questions
We've listed below a few of the questions that our team are frequently asked about our health and wellbeing courses. If you do have any other questions however, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Careers Team on 0800 612 4067.
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What is health and wellbeing coaching?
Health and wellbeing coaching is a powerful client-centred behaviour change intervention which seeks to support clients to become more proactive in self-managing their health and wellbeing status. In essence, the approach is a skilful conversation about change, exploring all the client’s feelings and emotions about making such changes, without any judgement, expectation or coercion.
Many of the clients that health and wellbeing coaches work with (or patients if working in a clinical setting) have long-term conditions and chronic illnesses, which can be improved by making simple lifestyle changes that are sustained. Health coaches work with clients to overcome barriers and obstacles that are preventing them from making positive changes in their lifestyle.
Health and we;;being coaches are experts in behaviour change and they focus on improving health related outcomes by working with people to set personalised goals and change their behaviours.
A health and wellbeing coach may be a dedicated professional that a client or patient is referred to when they are deemed by a clinician to be suitable for the intervention. However, many clinicians (e.g., doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, nutritionists) are in fact undertaking health and wellbeing coaching training because the communication and consultation skills central to the approach improve patient outcomes in their own practice.
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Where do health and wellbeing coaches work?
Health and wellbeing coaches work in a wide-range of professional settings, and these may include both clinical and non-clinical roles.
The NHS and partner organisations (e.g., exercise referral schemes, wellbeing initiatives) employ health and wellbeing coaches to provide specialist behaviour change support for a range of patients that have long-term health conditions that can be improved, or better managed with simple and sustained lifestyle improvements. Health and wellbeing coaches working in the NHS get to work with a wide-range of clients, many of whom have more specialist and complex needs. Consequently, coaches will often work as part of a multi-disciplinary team.
Health and wellbeing coaches may also work privately with clients, but may also be employed by employers who want to improve the health and wellbeing or their employees. Corporate health and wellbeing initiatives are becoming extremely popular as more and more employers are starting to appreciate the value of having a healthy and happy workforce.
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Who is this health and wellbeing coaching course accredited by?
Our health and wellbeing coaching course is accredited by the following organisations:
Personalised Care Institute (PCI) – this course has been designed to meet the competencies, capabilities, and values outlined in the PCI curriculum at level 1. The PCI curriculum is the main standard that NHS approved health coaching courses are mapped to.
CIMSPA – this programme is mapped to the Level 4 long-term conditions professional standard, which is the main quality assurance framework that all behaviour change programmes are mapped to in the active leisure sector.
YMCA Awards – this course satisfies YMCA Awards external quality assurance requirements for quality endorsed training.
National Centre for Behaviour Change (NCBC) – this programme has been developed to align with the NCBC competencies and as such, is fully endorsed by the NCBC.
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How long does the course take to complete?
This programme has been designed to take 4-6 months to complete, although we understand that some students will want to study the content and complete the assessments more intensively. While this is possible, it’s not strictly recommended, because of the time it takes to develop and refine many of the skills and techniques taught in this course. The reflective journal is designed to be completed over a longer period of time, with layers of reflection and evaluation being undertaken.
It is important to emphasise, however, that every student will be starting from a different place in terms of their prior knowledge, experience, and qualifications. We understand that some students will be able to complete this health and wellbeing coaching course in less time than the recommended 4-6 months, but some students may also need longer.
This is a self-paced programme so students can have up to 12 months to complete their studies and assessments, with options to extend if required.
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Thank you for signing up. If you want career advice or to learn more about the courses we offer, reach out to our friendly careers team.